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Random Musings and Two Research Summaries

By October 14, 2021Commentary

I hit a research desert and am all caught up.  One new interesting study that I noticed, on breakthrough infections, from North Carolina.  The study covered 16,000 vaccinated persons and followed them through September 24.  For some reason, infections were self-reported rather than based on recorded test results, so take the results with a grain of salt, but 1.9% of the vaccinated subjects reported becoming infected after vaccination.  Most of these were symptomatic.  Surprisingly, those who were younger were more likely to report a breakthru.  There was no difference in breakthru rates among those who did and didn’t have a prior infection, which is also a little surprising.  And look at this, reported mask wearing or not made no difference on breakthrough infections.  Vaccination rate in the county of residence had no association with likelihood of breakthru infection.  In terms of vaccine received, J & J had the highest rate, followed by Pfizer and the lowest rate was with Moderna.  People in the suburbs and rural areas also had higher breakthru rates than those residing in cities.  That too is surprising.   (Medrxiv Paper)

And at the same time we get this study which claims that vaccination is resulting in a strong response, including against the variants.  While the study notes both good circulating antibody, memory B cell response and T cell responses lasting for six months; unfortunately that appears to be the break point at which breakthrus start to multiply quickly, so big caveat on needing a longer followup.  (Science Paper)

As has occurred all epidemic, and the US is a big country, we have different trends in different regions at different times.  Right now the wave in the south has receded.   Not much occuring in the Southwest.  The Midwest and Northeast have some heat.  Here in Minnesota, if you left aside school testing, we just seem to have a pretty long plateau with some modest increase in cases.   I really don’t know which way it goes next.  We have a ton of vaccinated people here, but that isn’t stopping cases or hospitalizations or deaths.  In fact we have a much higher level of deaths than we did last year at this time.  Now this could all roll over in the next couple of weeks; there are some signs of that.  But it could also take a leg higher if it matched last year’s pattern.

But more important than tracking the daily epidemic ebbs and flows, we need as a country and as a society to have an exit plan from this epidemic.  And it needs to be a plan that has nothing to do with suppressing the virus, but with the notion that we have done immense damage to our people and we need to stop doing that damage and begin to reverse it and return to pre-pandemic life.  We have destroyed education and social life for children for 18 months.  We have terrified them and everyone else, but the children are less capable of coping with the sustained fear and anxiety and deprivation of social interaction.  We have inflicted enormous physical and mental health damage, seen in the toll from drug and alcohol overdoses and abuse and in the increase in acute cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other conditions.

The public health experts and politicians completely failed us by not considering the welfare of all the people in regard to all their health and well-being needs and by focussing so narrowly and obsessively on preventing CV-19 cases, which are non-threatening to 99% plus of the population.  And the economic and financial consequences have just been devastating.  All of these results, which flow not from the virus but from our chosen response to the epidemic, will be imposing a substantial toll on us for years if not decades.

So we have to stop now, we, like many European countries have, just need to say:  “enough, we are going to declare this epidemic over.  We are going to stop the obsession, the monomania about CV-19 cases and end all restrictions designed to limit spread, but now known to cause far worse harm to us collectively than CV-19 ever could.”

Join the discussion 13 Comments

  • Scott says:

    Epic rant.

  • Stacey Atneosen says:

    Thank you Kevin for always being honest about what this past almost two years has brought to our USA and its citizens.

  • J. Thomas says:

    How surprising, from the same authoritative tyrants who brought you this pandemic, they develop a vaccination scheme that forever requires boosters and threaten to shut you out of society if your don’t comply. All while ignoring and covering up every piece of data and information that supports natural immunity and our own immune systems. What a beautiful world they’ve been allowed to create for us all. The 2021 theme title “Coronamonomania Lives Forever’ is so spot on. Unfortunately, is by design !

  • Matt says:

    Plenty of research on Ivermectin out there while you wait around for research on other topics.

  • Joseph Lampe says:

    In Spring of 2020 I realized that multi variate analysis and multiple working hypotheses were not being used by our “leaders.” Nearly all of the best insight was coming from folks outside the formal power structures. Not sure we can get back to normal until incompetents like Gov. Walz (MN) and Biden are gone. If we had a parliamentary system we could quickly flush out Biden. Many citizens are stuck at the terrorized emotional end of the spectrum. A few are on the cognitive/analytical end, but there are not enough of us, and the political cycle limits how fast things can be changed.

  • J. Thomas says:

    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/10/no_author/the-forgotten-cure-that-prevents-mortal-heart-attacks/

    Off topic, but germane to your statin comment and how big pharma drives the medical options for us all.

  • J. Thomas says:

    Worth a read everyone. A positive approach has to be part of our futures.

    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/10/bretigne-shaffer/a-change-in-the-weather/

  • Debbie M says:

    Unfortunately, I don’t see this covidiocy going away any time soon. Went to Hy-Vee a couple of days ago and lots of people were DOUBLE masked. Almost everyone had at least one mask on…it was depressing. I almost walked out until an unmasked woman engaged me in a conversation in the produce department. She even got close to me…a breath of fresh air! How I long for those days gone by…

  • Rob says:

    I’m rather old and I live in Illinois. I cannot recall any time in my lie where the federal or state government ever had an exit strategy on anything. Thirteen years ago we elected a president who campaigned on exiting Guantanamo and then made no effort to do so in eight years. The bureaucratic desire to keep the gravy train running is strong and for some reason elected officials feel more beholden to the bureaucracies than to the electorate.

    One only need to look at the disastrous “exits” from Iraq and Afghanistan to understand – the bureaucrats did everything they could to drag their feet on those exits until the money was cut off.

  • Ann in L.A. says:

    Two weekends ago we went to a “pumpkin patch” that was half county fair, including lots of farm animals, hay rides, pig races, etc. At one point, we got some drinks and sat on picnic benches under an enormous tent–open on all sides. Our 21 year old was scared to be there because there were so many people in a slightly enclosed place.

    We have really messed up our young people and they will be paying the price for the rest of their lives.

  • J. Thomas says:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

    We need today’s version of the “Church Committee” to stand up, get to the bottom of this and shut if down. Unfortunately, if they were to start tomorrow, it would be years before this would be over.

  • guest says:

    In a recent post, I believe you claimed – not jokingly, AFAIK – that masking of children was child abuse. I agree.

    Here is an excerpt from MN Statutes:
    https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.378
    609.378 NEGLECT OR ENDANGERMENT OF CHILD
    “… A parent, legal guardian, or caretaker who endangers the child’s person or health by:
    (1) intentionally or recklessly causing or permitting a child to be placed in a situation likely to substantially harm the child’s physical, mental, or emotional health or cause the child’s death;…”

    Not a lawyer, but has anyone tried to bring a lawsuit against the public school system enforcing masks and/or the local medical experts who have zero accountability for the child masking advice they give?
    It seems like the main issues the defense and prosecution would argue over are:
    (a) whether constant mask wearing can cause physical, mental, or mental damage to a child
    (b) whether the potential protection masks provide (assuming for sake of argument they provide substantial protection) to a child is meaningfully greater than the potential damage incurred from continual wearing
    (c) kind of tangential, but also whether the medical opinion of one doctor or agency (pro-mask) can over-ride the medical opinion of your provider (if provider was mask-agnostic)

    Anyways, would the prosecution have the makings of a case?
    See the AIER article, “Masking Children: Tragic, Unscientific, and Damaging”.
    https://www.aier.org/article/masking-children-tragic-unscientific-and-damaging/

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